It depends WHERE of course. I think there are a few countries in this world where men and women have 100% equal rights. There are also countries where a woman is not allowed to walk in public by herself without a male "guardian".

Legally everyone has equal rights, but if you ask all the professional victims out there we still live a patriarchal society that hates women.

same work, same money and woman are half of everyone so they should get half.

I am all for equality to the point of everything to be equal will need to increase amount of sets in female tennis and increase distance for females in golf course. Also males should make same amount of money as a female do in Porn. Anything else that can be added to it as females making same money for same amount of work.... Be treated with respect in workplace. Election of females as priests and allowing males as nuns. Conducting to one day having a female pope. Beauty contest for men as mr america not requiring being a body builder just simply another male bimbo. So much equality needed. Specially in armed forces combat units. We haven't reached equality yet.

In Tech it has, in my experience, been a meritocracy. I've worked at Oracle, Siebel, KPMG Consulting / Bearingpoint, Expedia, Isilon / EMC / Dell and many other places. I have been at the senior manager to vp level where either my direct boss or who they reported to was a woman. I saw what we paid people. The workforce was diverse and there wasn't any bias.

I realize this isn't the case in many places yet.

I think we are generations away from women being shown respect in more situations than not. Even some women degrade other women. When a woman with position is interviewed or viewed in some way in the media the comments from both men and women are always about her weight, her clothes, her hair, her make up, her voice etc... and hardly ever about the substance of her communication or ideas. This continues to be a huge disadvantage for women in power. Many men just don't have what it takes to be able to see women as equal. Just look at all the old white men in government still making life and death decisions for women without their consent or even consideration to what they want. Imagine if women were making decisions for men in the same way, it would never happen.

I voted for lizards because I couldn't commit to any of the other choices.

It's like this: de jure, there's no law that says a woman can't be a firefighter. De facto, there's nothing stopping the men she works with from bullying and harassing her so badly that she not only can't work there anymore, but she develops permanent disability from the abuse (this actually happened).

Here's my simple, incredibly unscientific test: when I can skateboard through my mid-sized town in summer clothes and people look at me the same way they look at male skateboarders--which is to say, not: not staring, leering, hooting, taking pictures, etc.--then I'll know we've arrived.

Yay for equality before the law. It's incredibly important, was hard-fought, and should not be denegrated in any way.

Boo for pernicious, deep-seeded cultural sexism that all but voids that equality before the law.

The real work needs to happen in the raising of the next generations to think about and treat people like people. Enough of this men and women crap. Nobody operates a skateboard with their penis.

In some areas, the pay seems the same. My first wife was a CPA, and she got the same pay for the same work. Youngest daughter works for the Corp of Engineers, and is a section chief, and I think is fairly paid. Some of my other kids in jobs that the women get less than the men for the same work. Hopefully things are getting better. Grand daughter in nursing school, will see how she does.

The biggest factor in determining your rights is and probably always will be how deep your wallet is unless you live in a country with religious laws. Then, it's probably second.

We've clearly made strides forward but the statistics still show a clear bias in favour of men. I certainly identify as a feminist but it wasn't a realisation that I came to at some point in my life - I have always had strong female characters in my family and it never dawned on me that women shouldn't be treated equally and as fairly as men. I work with a lot of women who do roughly equivalent jobs to me and it would horrify me if they weren't on the same pay-scale and have an equivalent salary to me - allowing perhaps for bonuses or slight variation due to length of service etc.

Equality is inherent in humanity and no respecter of gender. (IMHO)

We should all be treated equally under the law.